Hitler wasn't a Christian or an atheist. It bugs me when people try to push him into the opposite corner to connect him to the philosophy they're arguing against. He is not an example of the evils of religion or atheism; he was just an arsehole.

Yeah, I don't know what got into me. It's not like "pretend to follow the religion of the folks you want to subjugate so that they think your rule is the Will of God" is part of the ol' Machiavellian playbook or something.

Seriously, why are so damn many True Believers so farking stupid? They can't seem to grasp that just because somebody says they follow Jeebus doesn't always mean the *actually* follow Jeebus. One of the reasons the Nigerian 419 scam is so effective is that the Nigerian Minister of Finance always states in his e-mails that God told him to contact John Q. Bumblefark directly, and Mr. Bumblefark is so delusional that he never considers that the Minister of Finance could be lying...

BTW, it makes me want to scheissen in my Lederhosen at the simpletons who think that Hitler was a hard-core Christian *or* a hard-core atheist. From what I read on him, I get the impression that he was into some sort of occult Teutonic neo-paganism--Wagnerian opera stuff with fat Brunhildes on horseback, that kind of stuff. If you read up on the SS, they were heavily into runic characters, deaths'-heads, and that whole German pagan mythology.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: You know, if it wasn't for all the unimaginable horror I bet being a Nazi was fun.

I'd have invaded a country or two for a chance just to wear the uniforms.

THIS. They were certainly snappy dressers.

And their military-industrial complex came up with the coolest stuff, like V-2's, jet fighters, rocket planes, etc. Bloody shame all that was done in the service of monstrous evil. Dammit, Hitler, why couldn't you have just taken over Russia and not mess around with the Genocide/Race war crap.? Jeez, you could have been cool...

The guy who sneaks in front of you and grabs your parking spot is an arsehole. I'm not saying Hitler never did that too though. He could have and if he did, he'd be an arsehole. The guy at Target last night could of been Hitler. What were we talking about?

I dunno. If you gave Parking Spot Taker the ability to kill whoever he wanted with no consequence to him, he might surprise you. Some people just suck, but you don't get to see the full depth of the suckiness until you give one of them power.

Hitler was Christian. He was Catholic with strong Lutheran leanings. Luther pretty much wrote the entire outline for the holocaust in "The Jews and Their Lies." His version also included some ahistorical nonsense that said that Jesus was Aryan and not Jewish. It's a bit like that White Jesus who is very popular throughout most of Europe and America but they took it seriously along with a holocaust-denier's worth of really bad counterfactual historical claims to make it seem true. Hitler at one point compared himself to Moses taking his people to the promised land without being able to see it himself. -- The Hitler Table talks are mostly a hoax, the only translation we typically get in English is a fraud and adjusted by some crazy french guy.

Hitler may or may not have been a Christian. However he was an ardent propagandist. Ruling a nation with a population that is Christian, a skillful propagandist plays the religious card. He has a good meal and provides some photographers some opportunities to take shots of him in front of a Christmas tree. If he wasn't a Christian, he certainly did some far more cynical actions than posing for Yule photos.

TeamVanHelsing:Hitler wasn't a Christian or an atheist. It bugs me when people try to push him into the opposite corner to connect him to the philosophy they're arguing against. He is not an example of the evils of religion or atheism; he was just an arsehole.

Maybe it's too much History Channel and pop culture talking, but I always imagined him as being a closet occultist.